Category Archives: CDE

About the Component Development Environment to create your own Embedded Components.

Processor Expert Component *.PEupd Files on GitHub

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The MCUonEclipse GitHub repository is great for everyone which is familiar with Git or GitHub. Previously I was hosting my Processor Expert components on steinerberg.com. Exporting and maintaining the Processor Expert Update Files (*.PEupd) one by one is a lot of effort. GitHub makes things a lot easier, but again: you need to be familiar with it. And not everyone is ‘gitting’ yet. To help the rest of the world (the non-Gitter), I have now published Processor Expert update files for all the components in the repository, so it is easier to install them.

IMPORTANT NOTE: After October 17th 2014, the releases of the McuOnEclipse Processor Expert has been moved to SourceForge, see McuOnEclipse Releases on SourceForge

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Added Write Protection Pin to FatFsMemSDHC

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What was missing in the FatFsMemSDHC component presented here is support for a ‘write protection’ pin. Well, that write protection is not present on micro-SD cards, and on normal SD cards it is a simple plastic thing with no real hardware meaning: it is all up to the software to respect it. While my other SD card components have support for such a write protection detection, it was lacking for the FatFsMemSDHC (for Kinetis) component. Time to fix this!

SD Card Lock

SD Card Lock: an SD-Card, a micro-SD Card and a micro-SD card adapter, both with write-enabled

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Extended Driver for the MMA8451Q Accelerometer

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In “Tutorial: Accelerating the KL25Z Freedom Board” I used the MMA8451Q accelerometer on the FRDM-KL25Z board in a very primitive way: I’m reading directly some low-level registers from the device through an I2C low-level component. No calibrating, no special device feature setting, only raw values. Since then, things have been evolved: In “Tutorial: Creating a Processor Expert Component for an Accelerometer” I started to create a driver for this accelerometer, and since then a lot more functionality has been added.

Tracing Accelerometer Values to the Shell

Traced Accelerometer Values to the Shell

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Tutorial: Creating a Processor Expert Component for an Accelerometer

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If you are a frequent reader of this blog, then you know: I’m a big fan of Processor Expert components. While there are many Processor Expert components delivered with CodeWarrior, it lacks many components and device drivers beside of the normal on-chip peripherals. But value gets added to an embedded project with all the external devices, sensors and actuators. That’s why I have created many more components which are available on my GitHub site. Readers of this blog have asked several times to create a tutorial on how to create a Processor Expert component. So why not working on that on a long Easter weekend full of cold rain and snow?

So here we go: a tutorial how to create a Processor Expert component for the MMA8451Q accelerometer found on the FRDM-KL25Z board:

MMA8451Q Accelerometer on the FRDM-KL25Z Board

MMA8451Q Accelerometer on the FRDM-KL25Z Board

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McuOnEclipse goes Git

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When I have asked by a student last year if I’m uing Git, I said “Git what?”. Yep, a shame I did not know what Git was a this time. But it is never to late to learn new things.

I was coming from CVS, moved to the successor of it (SVN) and was happy with it. Especially with having a local SVN server and repository, that was (and still is) a great thing. But to truely collaborate with a worldwide community, it is time to use something different: Git.

GitHub Bootcamp: 4 simple steps to git

GitHub Bootcamp: 4 simple steps to git

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A Processor Expert Component to Help with Hard Faults

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Ahrg! Again my ARM application crashed somewhere and I ended up in a HardFault exception :-(. In my earlier post I used a handler to get information from the processor what happened. But it is painful to add this handler again and again. So I decided to make things easier for me: with a special HardFault Processor Expert component :-).

After adding this HardFault component to my project, it automatically adds an entry to the vector table. So no manual steps are needed: having the component in the project and enabled will do the needed steps.

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Processor Expert Maxim I2C RTC for the Arduino Data Logger Shield

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There was one part missing to complete the software support for my Arduino DataLogger Shield on top of my FRDM-KL25Z Freedom board: support for the Maxim DS1307 RTC (Real Time Clock).

DS1307 on the Adafruit Data Logger Shield

DS1307 on the Adafruit Data Logger Shield (Source: http://www.ladyada.net/make/logshield/design.html)

Things got delayed a bit, as I first needed to get the I2C infrastructure up and running (see this post). But finally, I have things working :-). I proudly present: RTC_Maxim!

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A Generic I2C High Level Driver

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I’m working with the I2C bus recently a lot. I’m using it in a project to reverse-engineering skimming (credit card fraud) devices. I needed to improve one of my applications for the lecture classes where a MCF52259 is communicating with a TWR-LCD display over I2C. And I want to add RTC (Real-Time-Clock) capabilities to my Arduino Data Logger Shield which requires I2C.

The same time I want to have things working with ARM Cortex-M4 and M0+ devices. And here the challenge started: using the I2C_LDD (Logical Device Driver) Processor Expert components for the ARM Kinetis devices is definitely not simple and easy. I want to use my software compatible for both the ARM cores and say for S08 and ColdFire cores. So what I ended up is to write a ‘generic’ I2C driver on top of the low level Processor Expert components: named GenericI2C.

Generic I2C Component

Generic I2C Component

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FatFs with Kinetis

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An SD (Secure Digital) Card interface is kind of standard for many applications today: it provides a lot of memory at a reasonable cost. Still, I need a software stack for it, up to the level of a file system. So far I was really happy with using FatFs: an open source FAT file system provided by Elm-Chan. I’m using the FatFs Processor Expert component already in multiple designs. What was missing: a port to the Freescale Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 family of processors.

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There is a Time and Date for both Worlds

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The Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4(F) is a wonderful machine: a 32bit architecture, plenty of FLASH and RAM, an ideal play field. I love the Kinetis Tower boards, and even more the Freedom board which has an ARM Cortex-M0+ on it. I have a lot of projects on S08, S12 and ColdFire at the university, and they are all using a lot of Processor Expert components. Processor Expert is such a great productivity tool: having software in components allows easy software re-use. With Processor Expert abstracting from the hardware, I can easily port my applications to new boards and processors. Well, until Processor Expert changed for Kinetis :-(.

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